Mitchell Lazarus, Lawyer Helps Make BROADBAND POWERLINE pass FCC approval !!!

Lawyer Helps Make High Tech Holidays Happen
Posted on : Wed, 27 Dec 2006


ARLINGTON, Va. Dec. 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Technology topped many people's holiday gift lists this year. The efforts of talented designers, engineers and inventors deservedly get the credit for creating compelling technology. And while invention is what draws customers, it is not the only thing that makes the coolest hot gadgetry possible. Often, it is the unseen hand of a skilled attorney that provides the extra oomph required to make it possible for a great invention to become a great seller.

Many of the most compelling high tech gifts can be sold in the United States only if the FCC says they won't interfere with radio communications. Just about any computerized anything emits a low level radio signal. The FCC's engineering staff keeps a close watch. No one wants something on the market that could interfere with aircraft navigation or an ambulance radio call!

That's where an attorney experienced in resolving in FCC engineering issues can help -- someone like Mitchell Lazarus of Arlington, Virginia's Fletcher, Heald and Hildreth, P.L.C. Lazarus's 24 years of experience as an attorney are complemented by two engineering degrees. He also has experience educating some of the world's brightest engineering minds, during a stint on the teaching staff at MIT.

Through a combination of legal acumen, science and long experience with the FCC's people and processes, Lazarus has helped gain FCC approval for a host of certifiably hot technologies. Most notably, these days, Lazarus works with those seeking to provide Broadband over Power Lines (or "BPL"). BPL uses existing, nearly ubiquitous electric lines to deliver broadband Internet access even where it is uneconomical to lay new fiber. BPL can bridge the digital divide, so true broadband is available not just in the wired cores of cities and suburbs, but also in the great expanses of rural America. BPL means, if you have got a socket, you can get the best of the net.

As with many new and promising technologies, BPL has faced its share of detractors proffering technical or engineering excuses to keep it off the market. Each step along the way, Lazarus assisted the BPL industry to cut through the noise to gain eventual FCC approval for national BPL deployment. Only an appeals court decision can now stop BPL. And here, too, a combination of engineering and legal acumen will ultimately hold the key.

"The FCC's engineers are necessarily skeptical. That's their job. Technological innovations are like cats -- once let loose, they can be nearly impossible to corral," Lazarus said. "The key is to show the FCC's engineering staff how any potential harms to spectrum management efforts can managed and/or eliminated in a technically realistic way."

This is not the first time Lazarus has helped make high speed web surfing easier. He has also provided legal counsel when the most popular method for wireless internetworking -- so-called Wi-Fi "G" -- had its day before the FCC.

While it is the inspiration and perspiration of talented inventors, engineers and researchers that create what wows people, by helping these creators get through regulatory hurdles, lawyers like Mitchell Lazarus, more quietly, perhaps, help propel high tech holiday dazzlers the last mile to market.

Fletcher, Heald and Hildreth, P.L.C.